Everyone seems to want their city to be weird these days. Austin, Portland, Louisville, Boulder, Santa Cruz, Tacoma, Houston, Erie -- Erie? -- all have established "keep weird" campaigns.

As with global warming, it may already be too late. If you have to start a movement to stay weird, chances are you've already lost it. Madison does not seem to perceive itself as being in any great danger of losing its weirdness. At any rate, you can't make something be weird. It's organic. It is what it is. The answers culled in our annual Readers' Favorites Poll create a picture of a quirky Madison, an embarrassed Madison, a bold Madison, a Madison evolving, a Madison buried under a record 100-plus inches of snow -- and more recently, paddling through record rainfalls. Responders to the poll had decided opinions about everything from bus wraps to $1 taps. Some of you, it appears, are also nursing decades-old grudges. Let it go. Breathe deeply -- although not near MGE's coal-burning plant on Main Street, which this year helped gain Madison a spot as 81st on a list of carbon polluters published by the Brookings Institute. Over 1,200 readers voted and over 100 actually penned a haiku about our town. One person complained "Isthmus, you ask a lot"; we're happy to say that on the whole, our readers deliver. Thanks for sharing, Madison, newcomers and townies alike.

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